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Article published In:
Journal of Language and Politics
Vol. 18:2 (2019) ► pp.161–183

Individual moral otherness as a means to underscore sectoral otherness

| Ben-Gurion University of the Negev

This study examines the news broadcasts of the Israeli TV Channel 2. It focuses on coverage of instances in which Haredi ‘Jewish ultra-Orthodox’ individuals are accused of committing immoral acts such as child abuse, hit and run accident and rape. I argue that in all of these instances, the moral otherness of these individuals is linked to their Haredi identity, thus intensifying the negative-sectoral otherness of the entire Haredi community.

I discuss tagging, visual devices and especially discursive strategies used to link individual moral otherness to sectoral otherness at various levels of directness. Additionally, I analyze online comments written by viewers of the items discussed, which indicate the identification and interpretation of implications and implicatures conveyed by this rhetorical linkage.

Keywords: moral otherness, sectoral otherness, religious minorities, media, news discourse, implicatures, discursive strategies, Haredi(m) , ultra-Orthodox, online comments
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2. Haredim and sectoral-Haredi otherness
  • 3.The corpus
    • 3.1Primary corpus
    • 3.2Secondary corpus
  • 4.Marking immoral individuals as Haredim
    • 4.1Over-tagging ‘Haredi(m)’ in items on immoral individuals
    • 4.2Visual devices for indicating the Haredi identity of immoral individuals
    • 4.3Linguistic markers for indicating the Haredi identity of immoral individuals
      • 4.3.1Markers that refer to the immoral individuals
      • 4.3.2Markers that refer to the environment of immoral individuals
  • 5.Interpretation of implications and implicatures by viewers
  • 6.Summary and interpretative framing
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 18 April 2019
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/jlp.19012.shu
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